What is it to be Dark?
by GabrielsDoubt
Summary: What if Hermione wasn't as safe at her own home as we all thought? Triggers for Rape, Mugging, and generally unpleasant.


A/N: I was in a dark mood when I wrote this. It is largely unedited, unbeta'd. I cringe a little when I read it.

...

'_Newsflash Newsflash Newsflash'_

_'Well-loved dentists killed by gunshot wounds in their own home. Perpetrators still at large.'_

_'Late yesterday evening gunshots were heard at Pear Drive in Westchester. Upon arrival, two adults, Mr. William Granger, 55, and Mrs. Bethany Granger, 36, were found dead from apparent gunshot wounds to the head. One teen-aged girl, whose name is not being released at this time, was also found and is currently in critical condition at St. Mary's General Hospital. The perpetrators had fled the scene by the time the police arrived. More on this story at 6 o'clock in our evening news coverage.'_

_..._

Harry was upset that per usual, he was cut off from the wizarding world over the summer. While his position at Privet Drive had been elevated from 'boy under the stairs' to 'boy in Dudley's spare room', he was still not permitted to do any of his magical homework over the summer, though he did it anyway. He couldn't get the wizarding newspaper, so he was reduced to scouring the muggle newspapers in search of signs of deatheater attacks.

He was flipping through the police reports when a headline grabbed his attention. As he read through the article, his knees tried to fall out under him. Hermione had been attacked. She'd been attacked and it was in *muggle* news? Confusion swam around his mind.

...

When Harry arrived at St. Mary's, he was largely ignored. He waited around, until finally he heard someone talking about 'that poor Granger girl.' He followed down the hall and eventually found himself in a small, crowded room. All four patients inside were sleeping, and Harry quietly slipped through the door.

He checked around, and the last bed in the far corner was Hermione's. If not for the name plate, he wouldn't have been sure it was her. Her face was bruised and stitched and bandaged beyond recognition, and her hair was cropped away completely. He unsteadily took a seat by her side, and reached out to grab her hand. "I'm here now 'Mione. Merlin I'm so sorry, but I'm here now."

...

Hermione was very different when she went back to school that year. She was quiet and subdued, ignoring almost everything around her, but maintaining a subtle, hawk-like attentiveness that even made Harry queasy.

She no longer harassed Ron for his table manners - or for that manner, appeared to realize when breakfast was going on at all - but just when Harry imagined she was truly lost in her own world, her inflection-less voice would correct him on some inane, obscure fact like what exactly the first snitch was made of. And who would have known it was a bird, anyhow?

Her studies were still top-notch, and in fact, better than ever it seemed. The teachers allowed her to slip under their radar, even secretly happy that the know-it-all was no longer wagging her hand like an insolent, attention-seeking brat. Or so Snape thought.

She didn't grow her hair back, keeping it short and tucked away. Her brown eyes grew dull and distant.

"So the little mudblood decided to cut her hair."

Hermione didn't respond to Malfoy's comment. She didn't even seem to notice he was there. It was surreal.

"Hey Mudblood I'm talking to you!" Malfoy made to push her on the shoulder, and Harry and Ron to push him away, when suddenly Hermione's head snapped up and her hand shot out. Malfoy found himself sprawled across the floor, pushed away by an unseen force. Her voice was barely a whisper, and cold as ice, "Don't touch me."

Ron watched her walk away in awe, pointing out to Harry that her wand was still tucked neatly into her back pocket.

...

"Would someone please state for me the five principles that govern Dark Magik? Anyone?"

Professor Snape's eyes roamed the room. Most students looked frightened, as was usual in his classes, with the usual exceptions of Potter and... Granger's hand, which was always flagging in the air like a desperate plea, was oddly still, a limp piece of flesh on her desk, whilst her other held a quill and was scribbling.

She hadn't been as attentive in class as usual, and it would end now. He stalked over to her desk and snatched her parchment from her desk.

Reading out loud, "The seven flawed principles of what constitutes dark magik are as follows: greed, anger, hate, gluttony, lust, sloth, and pride. However, this precludes the possibility of dark magik born from fear, disgust, and self-loathing, which can overpower even the most light of us all. For example, the ..."

Severus' voice trailed off, his pale face loosing all color for a few moments, before masking his face. "Miss Granger, you will stay after class today." He said in a low cold tone that left no room for argument. The rest of his lesson was delivered in the cold and calculating manner that his students expected, but he asked no more questions, and merely assigned several pages of reading.

When he signaled the end of class, everyone swept out of the room, save the golden trio. Hermione's blank expression softened slightly as she nodded to her friends to leave, which they did, reluctantly.

Finally, it was just the two of them. "Miss Granger, please explain to me where you learned the 'Delivery of Justice' spell."

Hermione merely let her face fall back into the blank stare she had carried for the past few weeks since that fateful night in late august. "Miss Granger, this is a mastery level spell. I sincerely doubt it is covered in the restricted section of this library, but be sure I will check thoroughly once we are done here. Tell me now where you learned this spell."

Hermione finally shifted her gaze from the nothingness before her to her professor, and he withheld a shiver at the emptiness of her gaze. It was like that of a Dementor's victim. "Professor, unless you have something to punish me for, may I please leave so that I am not late to Transfiguration?" Her voice was soft and held no life, no happiness.

"Miss Granger, this spell has been banned by the ministry of magik. Do you know why?"

She didn't move, neither indicating assent nor dissent. "This spell kills the caster, Miss Granger."

Her eyes flickered, slightly. "Miss Granger, I cannot implore to you the importance of disclosing where you learned this spell. Do you realize what would happen if one of your classmates were to cast this? If they were to teach it to someone..."

"I haven't told a soul." She whispered.

"Yes but the resource you used is obviously not in as secure a location as it needs to be. Miss Granger, I implore you to please use what little common sense you have and realize..."

"There were no magical resources sir. I found out what it was called after digging through old archives and finding vague references to it."

Professor Snape ran her words through his head, twice, but reached the same conclusion. "Miss Granger, are you telling me you have seen this spell in action?"

She nodded, her eyes briefly welled up with tears before she blinked them away. "Miss Granger," he knelt down to eye level with her, trying to catch her gaze, "Hermione, when and where did you hear this spell?"

Her eyes widened, and she jumped up to flee the room. He shot his wand at the door, warding it against entry and exit.

"You will not leave until you tell me exactly how you know of this spell!"

She stopped dead in her tracks. Shrugging her shoulders, she walked calmly back over to her desk, and scooped up the remainder of her supplies quickly and efficiently.

When she looked him dead in the eye, he barely suppressed a flinch. Instead of the empty pits of a Kissed person, they were swirling holes of black and green, similar to when one used an unforgivable. A definite sign of black magik.

Her voice was ice and left chills down his spine as she spoke increasingly quietly, "I doubt you should have any concern that most students would be able to cast it as I did, as it is exceedingly rare for a child to memorize biblical verses by the age of eleven, and most definitely rarer still for them to continue to believe in a god when they are surrounded by such atrocities as what this world has to offer.

I, however, attended Muggle Sunday school faithfully with my now dead parents, and memorized every verse I could. In a moment of utter foolishness, I accidentally cast it. It killed all the intendeds, except one. Me." She abruptly turned and left, the magik that swirled around her easily dismantling the wards without her reaching for her wand.

Severus considered running after her, but he himself was too shocked from the realization. The spell was supposed to kill the caster; how on earth did she live?

...

Hermione requested permission to stay at Hogwarts that Christmas, due to having no relations who could and would care for her, and quickly found herself alone in the castle with a handful of professors and students. She quietly passed her days by the lake, watching the water ebb and flow. The day before Christmas, she made a special request to travel to Muggle London. Gift shopping, she claimed.

Dumbledore insisted she have a professor escort her, and she couldn't get out of it. As Professor Snape was the only professor with any experience in the Muggle world, he was designated her escort.

"Professor, at the moment you are merely my escort and security guard. Are we clear on this?"

"Miss Granger, the sooner you finish with your shopping, the sooner we can return home. I will not attempt to stop you."

"Good." Her eyes were weary.

She stopped by a small building, far from the main shopping district, which boasted a small coffee shop, a medical clinic, a law office, and a hardware store. "Please stay here, or go in the coffee shop. I'll be only an hour."

"Where are you going?"

"To the clinic next door. I need to take care of some things."

"Miss Granger, at the moment you are my charge. It would not be fitting of me to abandon you in the middle of town. Lead the way."

"Fine."

The clinic was small inside, or at least, the waiting room was. Hermione went to the front desk and checked in, and then a small polite nurse came out and called for, "Jane". To Snape's surprise, Hermione stood and followed the woman.

He waited.

And waited. He looked at the pamphlets around him. 'STDs, and how to prevent them.' 'AIDS and your community.' 'Women's health.' Weren't Granger's parents supposed to be dentists? He mulled over what he knew of the girl.

He felt a flutter of magik, after about 20 minutes. And then nothing. He began to get slightly nervous, and subtly cast a location spell. Hermione was still in the clinic.

When Hermione finally returned, she was pale and sloppy on her feet. "Let's go," she murmured, her steps slightly lost as she gripped his arm almost painfully to keep her balance.

Once they were outside, he rounded on the girl, "What in blazes was that Miss Granger?"

The dead look remained in her eyes, more haunted than ever before, "I needed to take care of something."

He was furious with her lack of answers, her vagueness, and his own ignorance to something larger that was apparently going on. As he opened his mouth to let loose a verbal barrage on the student, she made another request. "Can you apparate us to my parent's home with the address alone?"

Deciding to bottle up his anger for a more private place, he pulled them into an ally way. "Show me." She looked in his eyes, focusing on her parent's backyard, and with a muffled crack, the two of them left.

...

The first thing Severus noticed was the stench of the place. They were in the kitchen, food laden plates piled in the sink and molded. But the stench was that of dried blood and rot. "Miss Granger..."

"Please, professor, I have a lot to take care of in a short period of time. The garden is back out that way. You may wait for me there if you'd like."

Suddenly, he remembered a short conversation he'd overheard between Dumbledore and McGonnagall. "Her parents were murdered in her home, while she was there. She's a ward of the school now. There were other circumstances, but I don't know the details. Until she talks, Minerva, I don't think it's wise to press the issue."

He felt off balance, a feeling he despised immensely. "I'll ward the house. Get what you need."

He set about warding the house to all peoples, magical and muggle alike. He was not surprised to find that substantial wards against apparation and portkey were present. Once he was finished, he returned inside to find Granger was no longer in the kitchen. He sought her out, finding a more gruesome scene in the living room.

The front door appeared to have been broken in and then boarded shut; it was hanging slightly off its hinges and the molding was torn on the door handle side. The furniture was overturned, and bore mysterious brown stains. Granger was staring blankly at a spot on the floor, where there were two ominous holes in the hard wood flooring. Without looking his way, she moved to the bookshelves, pulling off several volumes. Wordlessly, wandlessly, she summoned a box that she set them in.

He watched. She packed all of the books from the living area, and then moved on to the staircase. She passed by one bedroom to the right, which she firmly shut the door and warded. Moving into the final bedroom, she similarly packed up that room.

She made a telephone call, and continued with her work. Snape watched silently as she packed room by room, not using a wand once; finally, Snape realized the girl was packing up the house, and started to help. After thirty minutes, a large truck appeared in the street in front of her house, and she began moving boxes out to the truck. The entire house was cleared, and he cast a deep scourgify on each room.

Coming to the room she had shut and warded so quickly, he dismantled the wards. As his hand hit the door, he heard her voice, "Don't. Please. Let me." He nodded, allowing the girl to come up from behind him. She looked at him with pleading eyes, and he stepped away. She quickly stepped through the door, pushing it firmly shut behind her. With the wards down, he could feel magic seeping from the room, dark deep magic. And once again, he waited.

After several minutes, he heard something hit the floor, and cursing under his breath, he burst into the room, wand in hand. Granger was on her knees in the middle of the room, a pile of dust on either side. he couldn't see her face, but from the movements of her shoulders he could see that she was weeping, however silently.

He took in the room, and felt ill. This was obviously her room, it had to be, as they cleared the house, no other rooms had the distinctive touch of a teenager. The mirror over the dressing table was shattered, the chair broken in pieces on the floor. The closet was torn open, it's folding doors ripped out of their tracts and the wood veneer broken.

Most disturbing was what was right ahead of him, and he tried to Occlude his emotions as strictly as possible. A bed, near the window. The bed was disgusting, even with the mattress removed. Brown stains patterned the walls near it. It was bare, too bare where paint had been worn off in strips. Scratch marks and shavings and dents covered the headboard, on each side near the posts. Near all four posts.

"They're dead." Her voice whispered, startling Snape as he took in the scene. Her voice was devoid of any and all emotion.

"I only regret that I can't kill them again." Snape, reeling from the information he'd gathered without inquiry, picked up the girl and fled the room. He set her down in the kitchen, on a counter, and cast a silent Legilimens.

_'Her parents were only going to be gone a few days, a conference in Little Surry. They'd offered to take her with them, but she wanted to study and let them have their fun. Things had been slightly strained between them since she started at Hogwarts, and she wanted a small break from the tension._

_She woke to the sound of the front door breaking open. Her heart racing, she scurried into her closet and hid as best as she could. Muggle robbers. She was protected against Death Eaters by the wards Dumbledore had constructed, but she never considered muggles a threat._

_Her wand in her hand, she slowed her breathing to a shallow and nearly quiet steady pace, as the robbers trashed the downstairs. Why why why didn't she go with them? She heard them take to the stairs, and held her breath. They opened the door to her room, saw the empty bed, and continued. She let out a quiet sigh of relief, maybe they would leave now. But then they came back, and walked into her room. "Check the bed. See if it's warm."_

_And then, the chase ended almost as quickly as it began. The man checked the bed, then immediately went to the closet. She cast a muggle repel charm, but her DADA wasn't very good, thanks to Umbridge the previous year, and her charm failed. They dragged her from the closet and threw her to the ground before them, snatching the wand from her grip. She was terrified._

_And for good reason._

_Apparently, Barry and Horace weren't satisfied with the little money they'd found in the house. They strung Hermione up to the bed and tied her hands, and feet. They quickly sliced her clothing away, leaving her naked and shivering._

_They raped her, again and again, claiming that they would get something for their work. When she screamed, they gagged her mouth with a dirty sock and pantyhose. She fought, burning the skin from her wrists and ankles until they were raw and bleeding, but the men kept going. It burned and she was sore and ached in places she didn't think *had* nerves._

_Two days passed, and she marked the passage of time by the sun in her window. They'd each get their fill of her in the morning, afternoon and at night, Merlin, at night was the worst. They'd unstrap her and string her arms to the ceiling fan in her room._

_They'd beat her, for not knowing access to her parent's banking information, for not being better in bed, for their own failures, until she could no longer hold herself up on her legs. When they'd let her down, they'd shove themselves in her face and force her to service them. She'd gag and vomit, but they'd continue until her throat was raw and lips were splitting, and then cum down her throat._

_They'd tied her to the bed again, backwards, so her vomit and dribble that leaked threw the gag sopped into the mattress, and then take her again._

_She took to reciting everything that she could remember to distract her mind from her body, and pull her soul away from reality. She recited all her text books from Hogwarts, then all her Primary school books, then all her children's books, or at least what she could remember._

_Seemingly in vain, she started reciting Bible verses. In these, she found solace. Some allowed her to dwell elsewhere, particularly several of the Psalms. Some even seemed to cause magik to flare in her blood, she noted with startling detachment while being beaten the second night._

_When her parents finally came home that Monday evening, Hermione barely recognized the sound of the front door opening. Then, she heard a scuffle, and someone shout her name. She screamed for them threw her gag, but the shouting stopped as two gunshots rang threw the house. No no no, she pleaded with the fates, but then those two vile creatures came upstairs, blood splattered on their clothes, and all of the disgust, and fear, and self-loathing in her reached out and encompassed her being._

_She wanted justice. She wanted vengeance. She wanted to die. Remembering a vague reference to the 'Delivery of Justice' charm, she focused on a verse she learned as a child, long before the world of magic highlighted her reality._

_"I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee._

_I am the deliverer, and Justice shall be served."_

_The men stopped before they reached her bed, and she chanted again in her head, "I am the deliverer, and Justice shall be served."_

_They fell to their knees, hands over their hearts, and she chanted one more time, focusing on all within her that was not light, that was not good, and that was no longer pure, "I am the deliverer and Justice shall be served."_

_The men's bodies melted away into ashes on the floor, and her vision swirled and dimmed.'_

Severus pulled back out of Hermione's mind, only to be forced back physically by a red eyed Hermione. "Why did you do that?"

He was at a loss for words. She pulled herself off of the counter, her blackened magic swirling thick around her, and just before she struck, it dissipated and left a shell of a young woman, collapsed to her knees. "Why didn't I die?"

Severus picked her up and brought her to the remaining furniture in the living room, which he had righted earlier in the day, and held her while she sobbed. Once her shudders had stopped, he began to speak.

"Twenty years ago I made the worst decision of my life. I was foolish and naive. My own parents had died two years prior in a domestic violence case, my dad had shot my mom and then himself. When I joined the Dark Lord, I had nothing else to hold onto and nothing to hold me back. I was ready to die, eager to die, for a cause that seemed to promise that no more witches would ever end up like my mom."

He turned Hermione in his lap and sat her on the couch next to him. "You are in a desperate place now Hermione, but I beg of you not to be rash. You didn't die... that I cannot explain. But you must realize you still have something to live for."

"And what is that exactly, Professor? A world that believes I am beneath them because of my birth? A world that generates people like... like those monsters? To be Harry Potter's sidekick and get dragged through the mud each time I can't keep him from foolishness?"

While he was tempted to smile at her complete admittance of Mr. Potter's lack of obedience, the utter despair and self-loathing that encompassed her eyes and frame stopped him.

"Hermione, you must continue. You are the biggest contradiction to what this war is being fought over. Surely you don't need me of all people to wax on about your academic achievements. I believe the only class you have ever not excelled in, the only course you have ever failed in being the number one student, was Divination, am I wrong? This world will not always be at war. But for this war, it needs you. Desperately. Not just as Harry's sidekick, or babysitter, but as tangible, living proof that the old ways and beliefs are irrefutably wrong."

Hermione dropped his gaze partway through his speech, but he lifted her chin as he finished. Her eyes were red, wet and puffy, and still streaming tears.

"If you can't continue to live and to fight for you, then you live and fight for every other muggle born that will come into existence. Spare future Grangers and Creevys and Evanses the pain of joining a world that hates them for their birth. Don't let their death be in vain."

She didn't say anything, she didn't nod her head. Instead, she buried her head into Snape's shoulder and let her tears run. By the time the river had soaked through his clothes, she was slightly sleeping, and Severus gently moved her to the couch, before trudging back up the stairs to clean out her bedroom and get it packed.

He vowed that the girl would not be alone anymore, and set about mentally to figure out how to make it so.

He had finished packing her room, and casting so many cleaning spells to try and rid the walls of the evidence that tainted them, that he didn't hear the door open.

His thoughts were so distracted by the Granger girl that he didn't notice her hand reaching for her wand, much less pulling it out and pointing it in his direction, until the word "Obliviate" passed her lips.

...

Shortly after the Potions Master and his temporary ward returned to Hogwarts that evening, his ward fled his presence. Not at all puzzled by thee young woman's very typical student response, he went about the remainder of his evening.

That night, at dinner, the staff and students gathered for the evening meal, but Hermione was suspiciously absent. The headmaster waved it off as "fatigue from a heavy day of shopping," but to Severus' recall, little shopping had been achieved. In fact, he remembered the... he didn't remember much of anything!

He stood abruptly and ran to the Gryffindor dormitories, cursing foolish Gryffindors who obviously did not understand that casting Obliviates on teachers was inexcusable behavior, stormed inside, and found Hermione Granger dead, with a small, sad smile on her lips and no apparent cause.


End file.
